🥀 Showers Or Flowers?

Breaking down Apple's robot plans, why Cathie Wood is worried about weakness in the labor market and more

Author

Charla Hojnacki
April 08, 2024

Happy Monday Zingernation! They say that April showers bring May flowers. I’m hoping that’s true for my portfolio as well, because it got crushed last Thursday when a handful of Fed officials came in and brought the market lower by more than 1%.

This week will be a big test for ol’ Mr. Market with CPI due on Wednesday as well as the beginning of Q1 earnings season starting on Friday with bank names like JP Morgan reporting. Also- happy eclipse day to anyone celebrating!

And, crypto is so back. Billions of dollars are flowing into the new Bitcoin ETFs, driving prices to near all-time highs. Join thousands of engaged readers of Future Finance - our FREE digital assets newsletter.

MARKET SNAPSHOT

Last Week: Friday was a big bounce-back day with investors buying the dip from Thursday’s sell off, but it wasn’t quite enough to bring us into the green on the week.

On Our Radar: Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee will do a radio interview at 1pm ET and if last week was any indication, watch out because we could get some more hawkish comments.

TOP STORY
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Basically: The non-farm payrolls report released last week revealed a robust addition of 303,000 jobs to the U.S. economy in March. However, Ark Investment Management founder Cathie Wood expressed concerns regarding two labor market trends highlighted by economists.

Low-Quality Job Gains: Economist Marko Bjegovic, founder of Arkomina Research, pointed out that private payrolls and total non-farm payrolls have mostly been revised down over the past 14 months since January 2023, while government jobs saw upward revisions. He noted that the government sector added 903,000 jobs since January 2023, one of the largest increases on record. However, he cautioned that an increase in government jobs might not necessarily be beneficial for the economy.

So: Bjegovic also highlighted discrepancies between establishment survey employment, which increased by 2.927 million in the last 12 months, and household survey employment, which saw a more modest rise of 642,000. He emphasized that full-time employment decreased significantly by 1.347 million, with all job gains coming from part-time positions.

Quoted: “NFP figures have been strong but UR and other parts of the household survey tell a different (recessionary) story,” Bjegovic said. Commenting on his post, Wood said, “Interesting and provocative employment history here, seemingly not a good omen for the future.”

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FIVE ZINGERS

Buy This Not That: Jim Cramer said that not all tech stocks are created equal. The ‘Mad Money’ host says to buy this one, and ditch this one.

Follow Through: Last week Tawain Semi’s stock bounced back after taking a dip from the earthquake. Here’s the bullish news pushing it higher today.

Growth Opportunities: Hyundai and Kia are looking to boost growth in emerging markets like India. Analysts appear to like the news.

Dog Eat Dog: It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there in the markets. Dogecoin just surpassed DraftKings’ market cap and these other companies.

Welcome To The Dark Side: If you thought there was no way to trade today’s eclipse, think again. Here’s why Verizon is trading higher.

ONE FOR THE ROAD
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Briefly: Apple’s cash cow, the iPhone, is no longer the revenue driver it used to be, forcing the company to look for the next big thing, Bloomberg columnist Mark Gurman said on Sunday.

Robots In The Works? Apple has “skunk-works teams” within its hardware engineering and AI organizations that are exploring robotics, said Gurman in the latest installment of his weekly “Power On” newsletter.

Quoted: “A nearer-term move into robotics would be a device Apple has been working on for several years: a table-top product that uses a robotic arm to move around a display,” he said.

So: The arm, the columnist said, could mimic a human on the other side of a FaceTime call, “shifting the screen to recreate a nod or a shake of the head.” This device, however, has yet to receive unified support from Apple’s executive team, he said.

Basically: Gurman also flagged a recent project involving the consideration of a home robot. Some people involved in the project are looking to make a machine that can handle household chores, he said, adding that such advances, however, may be decades away.

PRESENTED BY ARRIVED HOMES

Arrived's mission is to empower everyone to build wealth through modern real estate investing. We created an investor experience simplifying the complex decision-making traditionally associated with real estate — and lowered the barriers to entry — so anyone can do it.

With Arrived, investors can browse individual single-family residential homes and vacation rentals (pre-vetted based on their appreciation and income potential), choose how much to invest, and start building a highly-tailored portfolio of hand-selected investment properties in minutes.